He carries me out of the playground, through the alleyway, towards a green car. He unlocks the doors, puts me in the back seat and gets in beside me.
He says his little damsel in distress is safe and sound now. He’s the prince rescuing Rapunzel and he deserves a reward.
His hand slides towards me, but then he stops and sighs and sits back in his seat. He says that everyone’s doing something special to celebrate Millennium Eve, something different. We should too. He drums his fingers on my knee. This time he wants it to be different. This time he wants me to fight him. He puts a hand around my neck.
‘I want to feel you squirm.’
He gets out of the car and locks the door behind him. He takes something out of the boot. When he gets back in, there’s a length of rope in his hands. There’s something else too . . . some stretchy straps, like the ones Dad uses to hold things on the bike rack. I wriggle and kick as he ties my hands behind my back.
‘That’s a good girl,’ he says, and wraps the straps around my ankles.
He chuckles when I scream.
I’m bundled to the floor of the car . . . trapped between the back and front seats. He stuffs a dry chamois leather in my mouth . . . squeezes through to the front seat. He starts the car.
I scream, choke . . . fight for air.
I can’t breathe . . .
I try to spit the cloth from my mouth but choke even more. I taste oil and dirt. The cloth clogs my throat.
I . . . can’t . . . breathe!
Can’t breathe!
My heartbeat is hard . . . loud. My eyes feel like they’re bursting out of my head . . . Puke spurts from my nose. I can feel it in my throat. It’s hot and thick and I can’t swallow it but I can’t spit it out. It keeps on coming . . . thicker . . . blocking me up. Drowning . . . drowning my breath.
Street lamps whiz by. They’re all hazy . . . hazy and flickering. Fading. Fading . . . away.
It’s dark and quiet . . .
I’m cold . . .
I’m going up in the air . . . Slowly. Like a balloon at a party. Now I’m shooting up, like a rocket. Whoosh! Right up into the sky. It’s getting even darker . . . even colder.
I can feel something soft and light falling around me. It’s see-through too, a bit like a veil.
When I look down, I can see the earth, way, way below me. It looks so tiny. Now it’s getting bigger and bigger. I’m zooming in. Fast. I can see London, like at the start of Mary Poppins. I’m getting closer and closer.
There’s Mr Palmer.
He takes my body from the back seat and puts it in the boot of his car. He has to bend my knees to make me fit, and covers me up with a tartan rug. He weighs the rug down with a toolbox at one end and a shovel at the other.
He drives for a while, then stops outside a lock-up garage. He unlocks the door, pulls the car into the garage, closes the door and walks away.
He’s back. He’s wrapping me up in a roll of red carpet. Now he’s gone again. I’m left there. On my own.
Now he’s driving, to . . . to the council depot. He puts me in the back of his mobile library van. Someone asks about the carpet and he says it’s to stop the kids getting the van messy with their muddy feet like they do every winter. And to stop them slipping. He says he needs it even more this year as one of the schools on his route is a bit of a building site.
We’re driving along a road . . . the road to school. The school gates are open even though term hasn’t started so the builders can get in. I can’t see any police, though . . . Maybe they only look for good girls.
The Grey Wolf’s there! He walks across the playground and I think he’s coming to help Mr Palmer, but he goes into the school reception instead. They don’t even say hello.
There are teachers in the staffroom. They’re drinking coffee and flipping through notes. Planning lessons and trips I won’t get to do. But they look so serious, I know they’re talking about me too.
‘So much for a happy new year, eh?’ Mr Palmer says to a couple of them when they come out for a cigarette. He climbs out of the van. ‘Any news?’ He sighs and shakes his head when they say no. ‘Fingers crossed they find her safe and soon, eh?’
He goes into the school and comes out half an hour later with Mr Slater, the head of English. Mr Palmer has a sheet of paper in his hand. He tells Mr Slater he’ll have all the books he’s asked for this term.
He pretends to do paperwork in the van and shuffles books about. The first one he takes off the shelf and puts into a box is The Man Who Didn’t Wash His Dishes. He’s still there as the teachers leave the school. I try and call to them but no words come out.
The school playground is dark now. He pulls me out of the back of the van and into a trench where the new classroom will go. He picks up a builder’s spade . . . digs a hole in the trench . . . He’s putting me into it. Face down.
No! . . . No!
Soil and stones falls on top of me. It pitter-patters on the carpet . . . I feel really heavy.
Let me out! Let me out!
He’s gone. It’s quiet again. Dark and damp.
Now it’s the morning after he buried me. There’s a builder wearing a dayglo yellow waistcoat and a white plastic helmet. He pours in concrete – all over me. I can’t see anything any more but I feel like I’m inside something. It’s all around me. I don’t mean the earth and concrete. Whatever it is, it’s warm and wet and it’s beating like . . . like being in a heart . . .
Esme wraps her arms around herself, shivering. Ingrid looks over to the mirror on the opposite wall. She’s pale, shocked – but there’s a glint of pride in her eyes too.
‘Okay, Esme. I want you to imagine a great big smiley, happy orange sun in the distance, getting bigger and bigger as it comes closer . . . warmer and warmer. Smile getting brighter . . . and happier. Feel its warmth. Reach out towards it.’
Esme’s hand reaches out.
‘Feel it on your hands, your legs,’ Ingrid says. ‘Feel the way your muscles relax.’
Esme wriggles on the sofa.
‘You’re warm. Comfortable . . . safe. Drifting, down . . . down, gently, gently . . . Feel the sofa all around you, supporting you, holding you . . . Safe.’
Esme opens her eyes and stretches. She sits up and squints at the mirror. Yawns. Smiles.
‘Well done, Esme,’ Ingrid says. ‘I think we’ll leave it there for the moment.’
Lois seems to move in slow motion as she switches the camera off and shuts down the TV monitor. The room is silent. I stare at nothing, unblinking, feel myself grow faint and force myself to breathe. Short gasps of air collide with quiet sobs.
Brian cries into his hands, wipes his nose on the cuff of his shirt. Lois passes him a tissue from a box on the table, then takes one out for me.
She thinks I’m crying because I believe what Esme has said, but I’m not. I’m crying because something like this did happen to Amy. Because Esme is still making things up – about the way my daughter died. About me.
I want Brian to reach out and touch me, to hold me, but I’m scared that if he does, I’ll shatter into a thousand tiny pieces. The look he gives me has the same effect.
‘She came back,’ he whispers. ‘Amy came back. To tell you . . . about that . . . And you . . . you . . . told her to go back to the playground . . . to him.’
I jump as he thumps the table then falls across it, sobbing.
‘What were you thinking?’ he bawls. ‘How could you do it? Turn her away when she was asking for help?’
I reach to put my arm around him.
‘Brian, I . . .’
He leaps away from me, staggers and falls to the floor.
‘Keep away from me, you . . . monster!’
He crawls to a corner of the room and sits there, hunched up, rocking himself.
‘Brian, please. How can you even begin to believe this is true?’ I cry. I try to stand up but my legs give way and I slump back into the chair. ‘Any of it? Let alone that she came back and I ignored
those . . . those things she supposedly said. It’s all lies! Every last word of it. Why can’t you see that?’
I look across the table at Lois. She looks shaken, circumspect; she’s scraped the polish from all of her fingernails and the skin around them is raw and bleeding.
‘Oh God,’ I groan, my fists tightening. ‘You believe her too, don’t you?’
‘Well,’ she says quietly, without looking into my eyes, ‘some of the details are bang on.’
‘Oh, you’ve got proof Amy came back, have you?’ I cry. ‘Eye witnesses? CCTV footage?’
‘No, although if she came back through the gap in the railings like she says—’
‘Like Esme says!’
Lois nods.
‘Like Esme says, then she wouldn’t have shown up on the cameras by the gates on the main road anyway.’
‘Oh God. I can’t believe this is happening.’ I thrust my arms out to her, my palms up, pleading.
Lois tilts her head to one side. ‘Esme’s right about a few other things too.’
‘Such as?’ I ask, defiantly.
‘Palmer did have a green car. It’s something we checked when we were trying to put a case together.’
‘A coincidence,’ I say. ‘Or a lucky guess.’
‘Then there’s the way she says Amy died.’ Lois thumbs her pages of notes. ‘We’re still awaiting formal confirmation of cause of death – not easy to work out after such a long time – but the initial findings haven’t identified any signs of injury or attack. So choking is as likely as anything else.’
‘Or being strangled.’
There’s a pause.
‘Or being strangled,’ Lois says, eventually. ‘I have to say, it makes a kind of sense in some ways, but in others . . .’ She screws her eyes up and shakes her head.
‘It’s simple really,’ I say, glaring at her. ‘Any real detective would be able to work it out. Dana knew more than she said in her memoir and told Esme about it. Mystery solved.’
Lois raises her eyebrows and sighs.
‘I have considered that,’ she says. ‘It’s possible, of course, but . . .’
‘But what?’
‘Dana was scared of Esme, of who she thought she was,’ Lois says. ‘Too scared to confront her directly and make her talk about things she wanted to forget.’
‘As far as we know.’ I sit back in my chair, arms folded, daring her to challenge me.
‘As far as we know,’ Lois says reluctantly.
Brian stops rocking and looks up. His eyes are red and raw.
‘But . . . but what about the things Esme told Beth that aren’t actually included in Dana’s testimony?’
I turn to him, dumbfounded.
‘Like what?’
‘Well,’ he says, ‘Dana doesn’t say anything about Amy being stung by the jellyfish on Zante and me peeing on her foot to neutralise the sting, does she? Or about roller-blading down the tunnels at Elephant and Castle. And what about all that stuff about where we lived before we were married? And the broken bathroom mirror . . . I remember that . . . You said you’d done it when you were cleaning.’
‘I did! It was an accident!’
My mind is racing.
I think of the other discrepancies that Brian mentioned. I’ve read Dana’s A to Z a thousand times but I overlooked those missing details. There are other gaps too, I realise. Like Esme knowing that I drink my coffee black and used to eat grapefruit for breakfast. Like Amy wanting to have stripes like Bagpuss instead of chickenpox spots. I didn’t notice before that they were missing. I was blinded by anger, grief and confusion.
‘It doesn’t mean what you think it does,’ I say. ‘That Esme is Amy. In fact it proves my point that Dana did talk to Esme about Amy. So she must have known what happened to Amy all along. Which means Esme did too!’
‘And that would make Dana’s testimony just a pack of lies,’ Lois says slowly, scribbling on her notes. ‘I wasn’t aware of these discrepancies. You should have told us this earlier, Brian.’
He shakes his head.
‘I didn’t know I knew,’ he says. ‘It’s only just dawned on me, now that we’re looking for things that aren’t there, rather than the things that are.’
Lois clears her throat and draws circles around the notes she’s just made.
‘Actually, I’m not so sure Dana was lying,’ she says. ‘Think about it. Why would she include so much detail about every aspect of her life, her friendship with Amy, their abuse and so on, but miss out really critical bits? She actually said she was going to tell all that she knew. Every bloody bit, she says at the start of her recording . . . I think she did tell us. She was at the end of her rope, wanting to make amends to Amy. If she knew all the details she’d have come clean. It was her last chance to be forgiven for keeping quiet about everything.’
‘That’s just guesswork,’ I snap.
‘No, it’s detective work,’ Lois responds. ‘And besides, Dana must have hated her grandfather. She’d have given every single detail she had to incriminate him. If there was no truth in what she said, Bishop wouldn’t have confessed at all, let alone so readily.’
Brian nods.
‘So we’re back where we started. The only explanation for Esme’s account of what happened to Amy is that she is who she says she is.’ He looks at me, his eyes alight with hate. ‘So we have to believe what she says about coming home and you just running away from it and hiding in the bathroom. How could you? You’re her mother! I can’t believe it . . . The papers had it right all along: you’re to blame for Amy’s death.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’ The finger he points at me is like a dagger. ‘All those years of playing the martyr. The heartbroken mother, grieving and wringing her hands. All just to hide your own guilt.’
He stops and catches his breath. Then his mouth freezes, open wide. Appalled. Realisation creeps across his face.
‘You,’ he whispers. ‘It happened to you too, didn’t it?’
‘What did?’
‘What Bishop was doing to Amy.’
My head no longer feels part of me and shakes of its own volition, only subtly at first, then faster, more furiously. I slam my hand on the table and jump to my feet.
‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous, Brian!’ My eyes dart around the room, trying to find something firm to hook on, something to hold me back from the edge. ‘Do you think I’d have let Bishop touch me?’
‘Not Bishop,’ Brian sobs. ‘Someone like Bishop. When you were a girl.’ His voice grows stronger, more certain. ‘That’s what you meant when you said to Amy “not again” . . . You didn’t ask “why Amy?” You said “why me?”’
‘No!’ I thump the table again. ‘I didn’t say any of that. Esme made it all up, for Christ’s sake!’ I bury my head in my hands and scream, pace around the room. ‘Why can’t you see that this is all part of her game?’
‘Because it’s the truth.’
I snap my head up, wipe snotty tears from my cheeks.
‘Oh, it’s the truth, is it, Brian? Don’t you think if I’d been abused as a kid I might have said something about it before now? To you, my husband and confidant? My one-time best friend who knew everything there was to know about me? Who used to love me for it? Or to the psychiatrist you were so insistent I went to see?’
‘Amy didn’t say anything!’
‘She was a child.’ I’m so exasperated I can barely muster the energy to argue any more. But I have to.
‘Dana didn’t say anything either,’ Brian says. ‘Not even when she was an adult.’
I can feel Lois staring at me, her eyes probing.
‘It’s not at all unusual for people who were abused as children to remain silent into adulthood.’ Her voice is softer than it has been, more sympathetic, as if inviting my confidence. ‘Some never speak up about it.’
‘Oh God!’ I stand in front of the wall, rest my head against it. ‘I have nothing to speak up about.’
‘It would explain
a lot,’ Brian says thoughtfully.
I turn around. He’s nodding to himself, like some bloody TV detective on the scent of a crucial clue.
‘She always was a bit—’
‘She? You mean me? I am still here, Brian.’
‘You . . . you were . . . I don’t know . . . switched off.’ He shudders. ‘Cold.’
‘You were always saying I was too emotional!’
‘I meant in bed.’
My body recoils as if from a punch.
‘Fantastic! This just gets better and better.’ I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. ‘Jesus, how is this happening to me? Ten years ago I went through every parent’s worst nightmare. My child was taken from me. Vanished. Presumed dead . . . For ten years I’ve endured a living hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone.’
I walk around the room, looking at Brian and Lois in turn, like a lawyer arguing a case in court.
‘Then Esme turns up to really twist the knife. Ripping apart my memories of Amy one by one . . . raping them . . . destroying me. And when we finally learn the truth – due to my own efforts, I might add, seeing as the police have been no bloody use at all – the real perpetrator gets away and I’m the one who ends up in the dock. All on the say-so of some spiteful, evil girl with an eye on the main chance.’
I point at Lois.
‘Esme’s the one you should be locking up, not me. But, oh no, the dozy police, who couldn’t find a fuck in a brothel, swallow her ludicrous story even though they’ve got no definite, unshakeable proof. Or have you? Go on; I’m all ears.’
Lois fiddles with the pen in her hand.
‘Like I said, we’re not saying there’s a case to be answered here.’
‘So I can walk out right now, can I?’
‘Yes.’
‘No!’ Brian says. He pulls himself up and stands in front of the door with his arms folded. ‘She’s to blame. You’ve got to charge her.’
‘I am not to blame,’ I say, just inches from his face. I hold his gaze. ‘And even if I was, I don’t see what I could be charged with. Blame isn’t a criminal offence, as far as I know. Besides, there is nothing to build a case on.’ I step back from him and put on my coat. ‘In some ways I wish there was,’ I say. ‘I can just imagine the press interest in a test case for reincarnation. Like proving the existence of Santa Claus. Good luck with that.’
The Second Life of Amy Archer Page 30
